Turpentine diaries 2/17/19
I finished the underpainting today for Portrait of a Man Wearing Sunglasses, my second session with the painting. The painting is 32″ x 48.” Simple composition. Unlike last week’s Fork,…
Turpentine diaries 2/10/19
I had good painting sessions with Fork. The painting is so large, 4.5 x 5.5 feet, that I started painting portions of it before I completed all parts of the…
Murder on brushes
The first session with my new painting, Fork, mangled a new brush. Fork is a large painting, 54″ x 66″. Because it’s so large I am not transferring a cartoon…
Fat over lean
So you’ve embraced the two related studio aphorisms I discussed in this recent post: fat over lean, and make the lights thick but keep the darks thin. In practical terms…
Turpentine diaries 1/6/2019
This morning I finished the first painting of 2019, Along 4th Street. Today’s session was the 14th with this painting, which is par for a painting of this size, 40″x…
Turpentine diaries 12/31/2018
Art is filled with aphorisms. Fat over lean, for instance, is a famous adage. The meaning for this old saw that is the most straightforward is to paint thickly-applied paint…
Venice turpentine
David Davis was an art supply dealer in New York. He closed before the turn of the century–well before, so I have no idea how old this Venice turpentine I…
Spike
Oil of spike lavender fills the studio with its strong and fragrant aroma. Oil of spike is more powerful than the other common solvents–turpentine, and mineral spirits–but it’s also slower…